Pokemon Go moves: best movesets, move lists, the best and most powerful moves ranked

As well as Pokemon having elemental types, hidden stats and other in-depth details that determine their fighting strength, battles in Pokemon Go are also determined by one other major factor: the moves and moves sets that your Pokemon have at their disposal.

Moves are much like Pokemon themselves: All moves in the world of Pokemon Go are of a specific type, and that factors into the type strengths and weaknesses we’ve detailed in-depth elsewhere in our guide – a water move will do more damage against a fire Pokemon and so on and so forth.

Here’s the basis behind their impressive science and calculations: Moves in Pokemon Go have a duration, which is of course how long they take to execute. Moves also have a damage window, which is how long the period of time where they can do damage is. The upside of the duration is that long moves mean you have to wait longer before you can do your next move, while the damage window stat detail is that longer ones are theoretically better, as moves that are potentially damaging for longer are harder to dodge.

On top of these are two equally crucial stats – move power, which determines just how strong the move is at its base, and for Charge Moves (the second move on any Pokemon) what chance it has to deal out a critical hit and do more damage.

Throw these factors together and what you’re able to work out is an average DPS – damage per second – for each move in the game.

DPS is a good way of measuring a move’s potential. The grass-type move Power Whip is 50% more powerful than the dragon-type move Dragon Claw, but thanks to Dragon Claw being a far faster move you can execute Dragon Claw more frequently. On balance Dragon Claw is thus the more damaging move, and it also has a far higher critical hit chance.

With all that explained, we’ve listed the best 15 moves in both the standard move and charge move categories below along with type, DPS and the Pokemon that can have it. You can find the full move list complete with all their stats over on The Silph Road’s website.

This page was updated on April 4, 2017 to bring it up-to-date with the latest Pokemon Go balance patches and changes.